How to build founder trust within your network

As I’ve been working on enriching and developing our community here at Fundsup over the past few months, I’ve gradually realised that it’s not always about showing what we do and how we do it, but also gaining trust of our users and establishing meaningful, personal relationships. This applies to our founders especially.

After countless phone calls with founders, I noticed that the support and communication exchange that founders need to benefit from our platform, must be in a constant flow. This goes hand in hand with building a certain base of trust with the founder but also with the network of investors we have at Fundsup. Many founders ask about the investors in our network and how we match their company with the right one. The answer I give starts with explaining how our algorithm works and finishes with the questions about trust.

A line of thought I’ve had in mind since I started building our founder trust-base in the Fundsup community, is that showing your vulnerability really does make you a stronger partner all together. I found The Trust Edge (awesome read by the way) to be extremely helpful in outlining the key C’s where trust occurs between a founder and an investor. David Horsager highlights:

• clarity
• compassion
• character
• competence
• commitment
• connection
• contribution
• consistency

He argues that as soon as one of these start to decline, a relationship such as the one between founders and investors, will quickly start to disintegrate and in the case of a partnership, possibly lead to a party running straight out the back door.

As the conversations have been flowing and the questions keep on coming, I’ve started to create a culture around specific shared values we all go by at Fundsup. Our Founders First program is one for example, based on putting our founders first by giving them the best circumstances and opportunities to attract investors, secure funding and notably build an awareness around their business model. This is enabled through providing all founders with the ability to create an account by always offering a no-cost option (subject to approval), which is in contrast to traditional third parties (from crowd-funders to consultants) who take percentage of the overall deal-size.

Founders work a different way to how investors operate. This way of working doesn’t always fall in line with investors bias to predictability, as they prefer to minimize risk by establishing a plan and following it. There are various approaches to becoming a lifetime founder, but in order for these to be compatible, both founder and investor need to meet somewhere in the middle with their ways of working.

As an investor, it’s crucial to represent yourself, the sector in which you have the most experience, where you want to invest and how — not only the company you work for or helped build. Founders are looking for the right investors in the same way investors are looking for the right startups; there can only be a match if you’re representing yourself in the truest form, as this will also increase the chances of finding partners who trust you.

The founders you are contacting, as a trusted investor in the Fundsup network, will already be familiar with your company’s reputation. So what you need to convince them of is that you are not only the right match for their startup, but that you have the personal background and experience to support their company’s growth. It’s important to remember that all users are given a platform through Fundsup, that enables both the founder and investor to establish that first line of trust, before making any further arrangements.

Therefore as a founder, you must prepare to be exposed, share your company’s numbers, pitch deck and team member profiles. On the flip side, investors have to be open in showing numbers, including the amount and type of startups already funded, the return of investment they gave you, what support services founders can expect if they sign with you, etc.

On that note, remember that overall our mission is to provide committed founders of undiscovered early stage companies with increased connectivity and traction to key industry players. No hidden agenda, you can count on us. With this, I believe our network will have confidence in the technology and the team we’re building at Fundsup, giving us the tools we need to make our tool work to it’s strongest. Give us feedback, help us improve on the weaker points, but overall trust what we’re doing, because we do it good.